We are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. Ephesians 4:15-16.
For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. Hebrews 5:12.
The attesting miracles of an apostle were performed among you with all perseverance, by signs and wonders and works of power. 2 Corinthians 12:12.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God says:
Many of you have a wrong mindset about what it means to be a believer, a disciple today of Jesus. You still act the part of the woman pushing her way through the crowd to touch Jesus to get the power of healing into her body, the blind men who cried out beseeching and begging Jesus to heal them, and the woman begging that He say the Word to command the evil spirit from her daughter, but this is not the part of a disciple. Jesus died and I raised Him and I raised you who believe in His Name with Him and seated you with Him in Heaven. I filled you with My Holy Spirit, with resurrection power, and He told you who believe in His Name to cast out demons and lay your hands on the sick so that they will recover. Jesus left you a mandate to go and do the works He did and greater because anything you ask in His Name He will do. But He will do it through, with, and in YOU. Doing the works He did is not pride, it is simply OBEDIENCE to My Word.
What are you doing? Are you begging for Me to do things I have already done and telling people it may or may not happen as they have begged? Or are you going forward in faith to My Word and doing them? Are you even making the effort to command demons to depart? Are you rebuking fevers when they come on your child or relatives or friends or patients, or are you running for the aspirin and Tylenol? You who have believed so many years, is it not time you stepped up to be a disciple? And then an apostle? The twelve did and so did those they taught after Jesus’ resurrection, such as the deacons Philip and Stephen. Philip was casting out demons and healing the multitudes in Samaria just by his visit to that town. And then an angel transported him to preach to the court official from Ethiopia on his way home through the desert route in Judah and thus evangelize a nation through that one man.
And consider Peter and John, mere fishermen who walked with Jesus, listening to Him and seeing what He did, and once filled with the Holy Spirit, they went out and when they saw a lame man they did not just pass him by. They stopped and told him what they had they would give him. And what did they have? Healing power by faith in the Name of Jesus. And it exploded at their word and touch into the body of the man lame from birth and caused him to leap up and walk. Even Peter’s shadow healed people as he walked by them because the anointing of the Spirit was so released in him that it flowed out on others, thus fulfilling Jesus’ Words in the temple on the Feast of Tabernacles that rivers of living water would flow from within believers.
And what did Peter write to you who believe in My Son as he and all the early church did? “To those who have received a like precious faith of the same value as ours, in the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ: Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; 3 seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence. 2 Peter 1:1-3. You have the same spirit of faith, to each believer, I have given the same measure of faith. You should be growing up in your faith so that you no longer see yourself as the one crawling along the ground to grab the power outside you, the man by the pool of Bethesda waiting for someone to get him into the water, or as a lame beggar sitting helpless for someone else to set you free from your infirmity—this is not the you that you are in Christ. See yourself like Peter and John at the beautiful gate of the temple using your faith in the Name of Jesus to alleviate suffering and destroy the works of the devil.
And Paul, who did not even walk with Jesus as Peter and John did, became so full of My Spirit in his love for My Word in Jesus, that even cloths touched to him laid on others caused demons to be cast out and sickness to depart from the bodies of those so touched. Extraordinary miracles took place at his hands, just as they did at the hands of Peter, Philip, Stephen, and Priscilla and Aquila.
When Paul was shipwrecked on Malta, he shook off the poisonous snake that bit him as he gathered brush to make a fire and then he went on to heal the sick on the island. What would you have done? You have the same precious faith he did. He wrote that having the same spirit of faith, he believed and so he spoke. You go and do the same.
Why don’t you see yourself doing the works of Jesus? See yourself laying your hands on the sick, the infirm, those bent over in pain, those with fevers, those lame, deaf, or dumb, and healing happening. Jesus told you to go and preach the good news and heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, and cleanse lepers. Have you obeyed?
Where is your faith? Take your authority that I gave you in Christ Jesus. You should not be begging Me to do for you what I have already given you and told you to do. You can bind and loose. It is like a child who has been taught to tie and untie his shoes and he still commands his mother to do it for him.
Paul told the Corinthian church that he was an apostle of Mine; and how did he tell them they should know that? “The attesting miracles of an apostle were performed among you with all perseverance, by signs and wonders and works of power.” 2 Corinthians 12:12. Could you say the same? Jesus told people to believe in Him by at least believing in the works that He did. Do you have that to show? Or have you buried your talent in the ground until I return?
Be like Elisha when the king of Israel tore his clothes when Naaman came with a letter from his king asking the king to heal him of his leprosy! Elisha just told the king to send Naaman to Elisha and he would show him that there is a God in Israel. And he did.
Remember that Jesus did the wonderful works of power that took place at His hands not out of pride or to exalt His power and how close He was to Me, no, He humbled Himself to rely totally on My power in Him, no, He did them out of compassion. His heart went out to those suffering to take away that suffering. His motive was love, His action was done in love, and the result was the result of love at work. Jesus was My compassion reaction to the sins, sickness, and corruption caused by Adam’s abdication of his throne to the devil. Jesus came to undo that. And He told you to do the same as His body on earth.
But what is the key to your doing these things? The same key the disciples, become apostles, used. “But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry (service) of the Word.” Acts 6:4. And you can do this too, anywhere and everywhere because that is just what Jesus did and the result? “You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.” Acts 10:38. And that should describe the life of every believer.
I love you. It is time you grew up in Christ and became who I made you to be, My sons and daughters, doing the work of the Kingdom on earth. Stop begging and start believing. Pray the prayer of the first believers who followed the apostles: “And now Lord, grant that Your bond-servants may speak Your word with all confidence, while You extend Your hand to heal, and miracles and wonders take place through the name of Your holy child Jesus.” And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness.” Acts 4:30-31. Be confident, I am with you and it is My Will that you do these things, and when you ask anything according to My Will, I hear you, and you know when I have heard you it is yours.